


Speak Low to Me, Speak Love to Me

by semperama



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-09 01:03:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7780936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something feels different about this press tour, something too big and scary for Chris to think too hard about at first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speak Low to Me, Speak Love to Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnotherFraud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnotherFraud/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift for the ever-lovely Claudia. I LOVE YOU, BB. ENJOY. <33

They land in L.A. late at night, or early in the morning, depending on how you look at it. Chris slept on the plane because it was a necessity, but he feels less rested than before he closed his eyes. He can’t stop yawning as he shuffles his way down the gangway behind Zach, pulled along by his slipstream.

“Want me to get that?” Zach asks, nodding to Chris’s rolly bag once they emerge blinking into the harsh light of the terminal. Chris has his pillow and blanket clutched in one arm and his extra jacket draped over the other, so managing his carry-on is a little bit of a challenge. Zach’s hands are free. Chris shrugs and hands over the bag.

“Thanks, man,” he says, and yawns again. “Don’t know how you manage to travel so light.”

“Everything’s in my checked bag,” Zach says. He looks like he’s fighting a smile. “I don’t need three extra sweaters, four books, a pair of sweatpants, a couple blankets, and my dopp kit on me at all times.”

That’s a scarily accurate list of things in Chris’s carry-on. Except it’s two pairs of sweatpants. Also an extra cap. “You’re just jealous I was comfier than you on the plane.”

“You must’ve been. You were snoring.”

Chris scoffs, and nearly trips over his feet in the process. The corner of his blanket has started to trail on the ground, and he snatches it up with an indignant huff. “I do _not_ snore!”

Zach just grins at him.

The airport is all closed up for the night, the restaurants and shops dark with metal grates pulled across their doorways. They pass dour-looking janitors pushing mops listlessly across the tile or emptying trash cans, but there are few other people—just the ones that got off the plane with them, John and Karl and Simon and Justin all their handlers trailing somewhere behind. Chris’s publicist and Zach’s stylist are walking behind them, chatting with each other, and the acoustics make their voices echo too loud, so that Chris feels an unkind urge to shush them—which is immediately followed by a stab of guilt, as strong as if he’d actually done it rather than just thought about doing it.

The loopiness that characterized the past several days must be wearing off, he thinks. The press-tour patina fell off somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. The end is in sight..

“Hey, you okay?” Zach asks, reaching out to give his arm a squeeze. His eyes are full of genuine concern and affection. “I’m not going to have to carry you to the car, am I?”

“Hah.” Chris forces a grin. “I’d like to see you try.”

Zach raises his eyebrows. “Don’t tempt me.” 

It’s harmless flirting. Toothless, in fact, in a way Zach rarely is. Scratch that—a way Zach _never_ is. He has been looking at Chris for days like he’s the eighth wonder of the world, even when cameras are pointed their way, but they haven’t talked about it. He seems to be waiting for Chris to start whatever conversation it is he thinks they should be having, but Chris is a little too cowardly to do it. He fears that if he tries to put words to the things he’s been feeling, he’ll just screw it all up.

They do better speaking a language without words anyway. Like in Sydney, when they made out for an hour in Zach’s hotel room, hands clutching each other’s clothes but never diving underneath them. And in London, dry humping like teenagers with Sofia sleeping next to them on the bed. It’s easier to just feel than it is to figure it out.

The problem is, the way Zach’s been acting, he’s making Chris _want_ to figure it out.

“There’s yours,” he says when they’re at baggage claim, pointing at Chris’s bag and then running to grab it himself.

And then they get out to the car, and Zach opens the door and lets him slide in first.

And the whole way to the house, he keeps leaning over to murmur mundanities—”We should get burritos for dinner tomorrow” or “I’m looking forward to sleeping in a little”—his voice wrapping Chris up like an embrace, warm and soft and familiar.

“I’ve set up the guest room for you,” Chris says as they step through the front door. And okay, maybe the problem is with himself too. Zach is softer lately, conciliatory in a way, but Chris has made up for it in ways that make him worry he’s taking advantage. Their little game of tug o’ war is starting to shift in his favor, and he doesn’t know what to do with that. It feels like any moment now, Zach’s going to give up entirely, and Chris is going to land on his ass in the mud, a coil of rope in his lap and burns on his hands.

Zach huffs. “Guest room?”

Chris forces a laugh, gesturing toward the hallway. “You know where it is.”

He doesn’t argue, thank Christ. It’s too late to argue, and Chris isn’t positive his willpower is going to hold out very long on this front anyway. Seven days they have ahead of them. Seven nights. Granted, Chris is going to spend one of those in New York, but still, it seems like a lot of time. A luxurious amount of time.

—-

It _seems_ like a lot of time, but then three days pass in the blink of an eye. Press conference, photo call, press junket, foreign press junket. With two cities worth of promotion already behind him, it all starts to blur together, until he loses track of the days and is genuinely surprised when he wakes up to find it mostly over.

“Home stretch,” Zach sighs when they’re heading back from dinner with the rest of their Trek family—the ones who are in LA anyway. “How does it feel?”

It has been easier this time around, Chris thinks, but still, he’s not superhuman. The fiftieth time he got asked whether it was nice to be part of a franchise with such a rosy view of the future, it was hard not to snap, sarcastically, _No, it sucks. What good has optimism done for anyone lately?_

“Feels like shit, man,” he says. There’s a spot between his shoulder blades, where Zach’s hand rested for a minute while they were waiting for the valet, that still tingles from his touch. “It went by so fast.”

Zach seems shocked by that. He glances over at Chris with narrowed eyes, and Chris can see his hands tighten on the steering wheel for a moment. “I thought you hated it.”

Chris licks his lips and shrugs. “Not anymore.” It’s just one more thing that’s different now. One more thing he doesn’t think he can explain.

He waits through two stoplights, several minutes of silence, turning one idea over and over in his head until the edges are smooth and he’s sure he can get it out of his mouth without hurting himself.

“We should watch a movie when we get home,” he says. “Like old times.”

The old days, when Zach lived practically around the corner. When Chris could call him up any night of the week and tell him to come over and Zach would be there in no time flat with a six pack and a smile. This, now, doesn’t feel like that at all, and Chris doesn’t want it to. Turning back the clock would erase too much of the good stuff that happened in between. When he says “like old times” he means he wants to pretend they have all the time in the world, and pretend when Zach leaves, he’ll just be going around the corner.

“Yeah,” Zach says, smiling at the windshield. “Yeah, we should.”

Back at the house, Zach insists he needs a shower first, and Chris takes the time to change into a t-shirt and sweats and pick out a low-maintenance flick for them to watch. He settles on The Goonies, because it goes well with the whole nostalgia theme of the night. The week. Whatever. Zach snorts when he walks into the living room with wet hair and bare feet and sees the title screen, and Chris feels victorious, as he always does when he makes a decision Zach approves of.

It amazes him sometimes that people look at Zach and see nothing but intensity and sharp edges. They should take a gander at him when he’s curled up in the corner of Chris’s couch, illuminated by the light from the television. Or in the early morning, before he’s had his coffee and before he’s alert enough to have full control over his expression. Or now, when he stretches his arm out across the back of the couch and scratches his fingers absently across Chris’s shoulder. 

Chris wants to lean into it, but he is still wrestling with so much uncertainty. Over the past few days, there have been times when he wanted Zach so much it set his teeth on edge, but he has been trying to keep his head on straight as much as possible, while he figures things out, while he tries to pinpoint the root of the expansive feeling in his chest. It helps that Zach isn’t pushing for anything. Maybe he sees the end of the tour coming up quickly too, and he knows it’s smarter to ease off the gas. They really should act like grown men and talk about it, Chris thinks. But talking is overrated. He’d rather just _be_ with Zach, just exist in his space, while he still can.

“You’re sure you don’t mind me staying here while you’re gone, right” Zach asks over the movie, when they’re about halfway through it. “I can stay at Joe’s for the night or something.”

Wrinkling his nose, Chris gives a squirmy little shrug. “Doesn’t make sense for you to lug your stuff over there and back for one night. Just don’t burn the place down or anything.”

“But you know how I love to play with matches.” Their eyes meet, and they both grin, but then the moment comes to an abrupt end when Zach’s smile fades into an uncertain frown. “Actually I, uh, I thought maybe I’d just stay with Joe the rest of the time. Get out of your hair.”

“Out of my hair?” Chris repeats incredulously. “I don’t...want you out of my hair.”

He turns completely away from the movie now, studying Zach’s face, looking for clues. They get to do this once every three years, and now Zach wants to cut it short? 

“Are you sure about that?” Zach asks, raising an eyebrow. Chris notices all at once that Zach’s fingers are still caressing his shoulder. His thumb has found the skin just above the collar of Chris’s shirt, where it rests like it belongs there. 

“I want you here,” Chris says firmly. “Come on. You’ve gotta know that.”

“You have a funny way of showing it.”

It’s not fair, and Chris would point that out if he could do it without sounding petulant. Plus he knows, at this point, that Zach is probably right. He’s probably pulled back too far, made Zach feel unwelcome or unwanted. Because it’s always been all or nothing with them, hasn’t it? The first night they met, at that house party, Zach cornered him in the bathroom and crowded him up against the sink, took his face in his hands and kissed him until he thought he’d hyperventilate, told him he had the prettiest eyes he’d ever seen and didn’t look away while he jerked him off. A week later, they got coffee and went for a walk and lost track of time, ended up talking for two hours. It’s all always been twisted up together. Friendship. Love. Sex. Who can even tell anymore? Maybe it’s impossible to take any one part away without the whole thing collapsing.

Zach’s palm slides up to cup the side of Chris’s neck, and Chris closes his eyes, sucks in a breath. Inexplicable inner turmoil aside, his body has a Pavlovian reaction to Zach’s touch, especially when his thumb pushes against his pulse point and Chris knows he can feel how his heart is racing. And he’s sure the sweatpants he’s wearing now hide nothing. Even more sure when Zach sucks in a breath.

“How about now?” Chris asks as he opens his eyes again. “Am I doing a better job of showing it now?”

The movie is still playing in the background—Mikey is kissing Andy, his feet sliding on slippery rock while the music swells. Zach lets go of Chris, grabs the remote off the table, and mutes it. Then, with no more prelude than that, he slides off the couch and onto his knees, situates himself between Chris’s legs and runs his hands up the inside of his thighs.

“Please,” he says hoarsely, like a dying man. And how could Chris deny such a heartfelt request? He threads his fingers into Zach’s still-damp hair and nods once.

Zach lets out a deep sound of satisfaction lowers his head down in Chris’s lap, butting his face up against the place where the fabric is tented and mouthing at him through it. The heat of his breath seems magnified when it passes through the cotton, so that by the time it reaches Chris’s skin he’s not sure whether to squirm closer or squirm away before it burns him. It hasn’t been that long since they were fooling around in London, but somehow it seems like a lifetime ago now. 

“I’ve wanted you so much,” Zach says as he rubs his whole face against him, nuzzling like a cat trying to mark him with his scent. “I could stay here all night.”

“I’d prefer you didn’t,” Chris gasps. He’s not sure he has the stamina for that. He’s not sure he has the stamina for _this_ , especially not once Zach starts using his hand too, cupping Chris through his sweatpants and then stretching the fabric over Chris’s cock so he can back off a little and look at him. There was a time when Chris’s whole body would have flushed bright red under the weight of a gaze like that, but he doesn’t feel bashful now. Just impatient. “Zach, come on.”

Zach looks up at him with earnest adoration, and that _does_ make Chris’s face burn. This should be when Zach laughs at him and asks him to do a prettier job of begging, or tells him in no uncertain terms that he’s going to have to be patient. Instead, he holds Chris’s eyes and shakes his head, like he has no idea what to do next. 

In an instant, Chris is awash with tenderness. He reaches for Zach’s face and pulls him up into a desperate kiss, sucking Zach’s lower lip into his mouth and grinning when Zach moans. It makes him think of the last time Zach was in LA. No—no, not the last time, the time before that. Almost a month ago now, and so much has happened since then. Zach had kissed him like this then. Chris had been sitting on the edge of the bed, sweaty and shaky from languorous morning sex, and Zach had been about to leave, to go back to New York. But he came over and kissed Chris, not like he was saying goodbye, but like it was a prelude to something else. Chris had appreciated that. Loved him for it, even. It was like he was saying, _Wait here, Chris, I’ll be right back._ And so Chris had waited. And so Zach returned. He always did. Does.

“Fucking want you,” Zach groans. His hands are in Chris’s lap again, stroking his thighs, gliding over his erection and curling around it as much as the sweatpants will allow. 

“Want you too,” Chris says as he moves to mouth at Zach’s jaw. But not here, on the aesthetically-pleasing-but-not-quite-comfortable couch. In a bed, where they can stretch out and roll around and fall asleep afterward wrapped in each other’s arms.

“Here,” Chris says, then stands up and tugs Zach up after him, kisses him hard but briefly. “Go get in bed. I’ll be right behind you.”

It’s heady when Zach obeys him, wandering off down the hall after casting a longing look over his shoulder. Chris reaches down to adjust himself, then sets about being responsible. He stops the movie and turns off the television. He clears the two empty beer bottles off the table and sets the alarm closes the blinds in the kitchen. Is he making Zach wait? Hell yes he’s making Zach wait. And maybe his heart is beating too hard, and he’s waiting, too, to find his footing.

When he pads down the hall to the bedroom, he finds Zach not naked and getting himself ready, not posed, but curled up under the covers on his side with his hands under his head, like he could be about to fall asleep. He smiles softly when Chris walks into the room but doesn’t move.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Chris replies. He lingers there by the doorway and imagines—easily—a world in which he walks in to see this sight every night. The way Zach’s watching him, Chris can tell he’s imagining the same thing. It’s the most sure he’s felt of anything since the press tour started. “You should undress,” he says. His voice is shaking, but it’s not anxiety. It’s need. “But don’t get up.”

Zach’s arms disappear under the covers and come out some moments with balled up clothing, which he drops brazenly onto the floor before tugging the comforter up to his neck and grinning.

“When did you get shy?” Chris asks, tugging his shirt off over his head as he walks over to the bed. He doesn’t get into it, instead stopping with his thighs brush up against the mattress. 

“Not shy,” Zach says, and then reaches out to demonstrate. Chris hasn’t shed his sweatpants yet, and it would be a pity if Zach didn’t seem so enthralled with them. He tugs the cotton taut again, then sits up on one elbow enough to get his mouth over the hot, hard line of Chris’s cock. This time it’s not light nuzzling or teasing. He licks and sucks at the fabric like he’s trying to dissolve it out of the way, and considering his enthusiasm, Chris wouldn’t be surprised if he succeeded. “You’re so fucking gorgeous,” he murmurs, then runs his tongue with startling precision over the place where Chris is already leaking. Maybe Zach can even taste him there. He hums happily like he can. “God, look at you.”

And look he does, taking two handfuls of Chris’s ass and leaning back to examine the nice job he’s done of darkening the front Chris’s sweats with the heat and wet of his mouth.

“Alright,” Chris chuckles. “That’s enough.”

Zach blinks docilely at him, then curls his fingers into the waistband of the sweatpants and pushes them down, easing them over the curve of Chris’s ass and then letting them fall to the floor. Chris smiles as he steps out of them. He lifts the edge of the covers and crawls into the space Zach has already warmed up, rolls Zach onto his back and laughs into his neck.

“How is this different every time?” he asks as he ruts shamelessly against Zach’s thigh. “How aren’t we tired of each other yet?”

“Is that what usually happens to you? You get tired?”

They’re breaking protocol here. They normally don’t talk about other people, because when they’re together, no other people exist. But Chris wonders if _this_ is what he’s been feeling lately—what Zach’s been feeling too. The world is pushing itself in through the cracks, and maybe it’s not so bleak out there after all. Maybe they don’t have to shut themselves off from it to survive.

“It wouldn’t happen with you,” Chris confesses, and it’s as close as he’s come to telling Zach how he feels.

But Zach laughs at him, sounding unsurprised. “I know. I’m more tiring than most. It would have happened by now, if it was going to.”

Chris props himself up so they can smile at each other. “You’re not wrong.”

They kiss and roll across the bed, Zach undulating between Chris’s thighs before Chris manages to pin him again with hands bruising on his hips. That tenderness he felt earlier consumes him again, but this time it makes him feel shaky and covers everything in a haze of urgency. He trails one hand down to scrape through the hair on Zach’s thigh, then dips it down between his legs, skipping Zach’s cock entirely to slide his knuckles down to the cleft of his ass. A thrill runs through him when Zach shudders and sucks in a breath.

“You want it?” Chris asks.

“Want what?” Zach is trying for cheeky, but he’s panting too hard for it to work. Chris grins and leans in to speak in his ear, their stubbly jaws rasping against each other.

“Want me inside you? Want me to fuck you?”

“Chris,” Zach whines, as if he wasn’t the one goading a moment ago. “Yes, yeah, _come on_.”

It’s a strange feeling, the way his stomach falls away at the same time he’s filled with smug satisfaction. He doesn’t often get to see Zach this way, and it’s both exhilarating and scary. It’s a power he’s still getting used to.

Zach clings to him while he roots around in the bedside table. He groans when Chris’s hand returns with fingers now slick. If their positions were reversed, this would be the part where Zach teases him a little longer, until he’s near sobbing with desperation, and maybe someday Chris will try that trick on him, but now he doesn’t think he can. There’s a relentless tugging in his chest, like each individual cell in his body is desperate to be closer to Zach by any means possible. Chris feels almost resentful of the fact that he has to keep space between their bodies while he fingers Zach open. He can’t press them chest to chest, thigh to thigh. He can’t slide into him right yet. 

He makes up for it by pressing their mouths together, tracing Zach’s tongue with his own and swallowing every one of his low, needful sounds. The fingers of his free hand tangle in Zach’s hair and tug his head back. Zach’s body arches, and he grinds down on Chris’s fingers, three of them now and maybe still not enough, because it’s been a long time since they’ve done this and God knows Chris is a lot to take. Still, it isn’t long before he’s hissing in Chris’s ear, “Come on, I’m ready, I’m ready, Chris, do it.”

Chris tears the condom open with his teeth and can’t stop shaking as he rolls it onto himself. Zach is watching him like he’s been watching him for the past week, with so much—too much—love in his eyes. It makes Chris want to look away and makes him never want to look away. Never. That’s a word he can use now without feeling like it’s half a lie. When did things change so much?

He fucks Zach slowly but deeply, almost roughly, fingers digging into Zach’s hip bones to hold him in place. Zach has never been particularly noisy in bed, but he makes plenty of noise now, like he’s letting days worth of pent-up tension out of his body in the form of groans and whines and— _Chris, Chris, Christopher_. 

“This what you wanted?” he asks, watching Zach’s face. “Is this what you wanted, Zach? Tell me.”

Zach moans and screws his eyes shut until Chris palms the side of his face in a silent command for him to open them again.

“Tell me how it feels,” Chris says.

“So good. So _fucking_ good. Don’t stop.”

_I won’t_ , Chris thinks, but he’s too busy kissing Zach to say it.

———

Afterward, they lie tangled together, Zach’s head pillowed on Chris’s chest while Chris runs his fingers through his sweaty hair. They are still a mess—they should take a shower—but Chris thinks he might die if someone forces him to get out of bed anytime soon. He thinks in twenty minutes or so he could go again. Make it so Zach has trouble sitting tomorrow. Make it so every time he moves he’ll be thinking of Chris. The thought makes him grin at the ceiling.

“What are you so happy about?” Zach asks, even though he can’t see his face. Do they know each other that well? Can Zach _feel_ him smiling?

“Take a guess,” Chris says.

There’s a long pause in which Zach thumbs absently at one of his nipples and impotent sparks flare in his gut, a slow burn of arousal that isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

“You love me,” Zach says matter-of-factly.

Chris hums. “Always.”

“So what’s different now?”

Even as Zach asks it, Chris can tell he already knows the answer, probably knew the answer before he did. It must have been obvious. When was the last time Chris was in a real relationship with someone else? It’s like he’s been building to this for years, to the point where he gets to be happy. His career choices, the way he deals with his PR team—everything has been pointing them here.

No fucking _wonder_ Zach has looked like he’s on cloud nine. He knew the whole time. He knew they were headed for a better place.

“You asshole,” Chris laughs, then jerks Zach up roughly for a kiss. “Why didn’t you just talk to me?”

Zach chuckles against his mouth. “Because it’s more fun this way. If you want to have all your major revelations in life while fucking me, I won’t complain.”

“When did you know?”

“At the fan event,” Zach says. “Or after, I guess. That night. The way you looked at me...it was different. It was like you were tired of letting go.”

“I _am_ tired of letting go.” 

It’s time, Chris thinks. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next week. But soon. No more fear of commitment or what the public will think or what it’ll do to his career. It’s time to put his own happiness first, like he should have been doing all along.

Zach looks positively giddy. He props himself over Chris’s body and drags his fingers down the side of his face, smiling so big that Chris can see all of his teeth, even the crooked ones on the bottom that he usually tries to hide.

“You love me,” he says again, sing-song, drawing out the word ‘love’.

Chris surges up and pushes him flat on his back again. He pins his wrists over his head and kisses him soundly, as much to shut him up as anything else. Zach is going to be incorrigible. He’ll remind him forever, _Remember that time you almost didn’t realize you were ready to be with me for real?_ He’ll hold it over Chris’s head and use it to extract so many not-quite-begrudging favors, until they’re old and gray, until the very end of their lives.

“I love you,” Chris confirms, and kisses the end of Zach’s nose. Whatever other smartass remarks where going to come out of Zach’s mouth are forestalled as his face crinkles up with delight. Outside it’s getting lighter, and soon they’ll have to go out into the world and do their jobs and eventually part ways again, but it’s okay. It’s okay now. Everything is going to be okay from here on out.


End file.
